One of the major arguments climate polluters have deployed against being made to pay for their pollution is the threat of "leakage": that they will simply move production to some country where they don't have to pay, resulting in no actual reduction in emissions. Which sounded superficially convincing back in the 1990's when almost nobody was pricing emissions, but a lot less convincing now when a huge chunk of the world is. But a huge chunk isn't everybody, and there are still holdouts - but there are ways of fixing that too. From 2026 Europe will be applying a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism - basicly slapping a carbon price on high-emissions imports at the border, to make sure they pay for their carbon. And now the UK is joining them:
Imported raw materials such as steel and cement will incur a new carbon tax from 2027 under UK plans designed to support domestic producers and reduce emissions, but the government is facing criticism for not moving fast enough.And the big argument against it? That they're not doing it quickly enough. Which tells you how much the world has changed. Countries with carbon pricing now see no reason to tolerate cheats who dump their pollution on others.[...]
The chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, said: “This levy will make sure carbon intensive products from overseas – like steel and ceramics – face a comparable carbon price to those produced in the UK, so that our decarbonisation efforts translate into reductions in global emissions.
“This should give UK industry the confidence to invest in decarbonisation as the world transitions to net zero.”
Now of course we just need major importers to do this to dairy products, and that will solve our agricultural emissions argument overnight.
